Sunday, March 4, 2007

Power Players and Run Chasers

Two interesting articles from Simon Wilde and Derek Pringle. Though both articles are anglocentric, their conclusions can be applied to all cricket teams.

Simon Wilde's article talks about the fact that 57% of all ODIs are won by the team batting second and that the win percentage is higher in the Windies. How much higher? He didn't say. Anybody out there willing to expend the energy to figure it out? We will help.

Derek Pringle on the other hand convincingly argues that power players (with strong bottom hand-like Sehwag and Tendulkar) will thrive in the Windies.

So, the trick to winning the world cup is simple: stack the team with power players and chase down targets.

8 comments:

Watching BER-ENG warmup match -- and Jesus, if Dwayne Leverock (who just took wickets from Pietersen and Collingwood!) isn't the fattest athlete I've ever seen. I mean, he's completely immobile. But damn it if he isn't accurate.

I did the math. As you can see here, the numbers are no different in the Windies. (You may need a Google account to view the speadsheet.) 57% of the time, the team batting second wins. Choosing to bat in an ODI is simply the wrong decision in most cases.

This makes me happy. I'm glad that the game is relatively resistant to ground-by-ground variation. It bodes well for the future of sophisticated statistical cricket analysis.

Very nice. The numbers make sense. Would have been quite surprised if they were very different. Batting second is the smart thing to do in most cases. Though, Steve Waugh in his autobiography felt that batting first or second did not make much of a difference...The improbable run India had (about 18 or 20 wins) about one and half years ago was mostly by chasing down scores.